Staffing a new administration is a big job. That’s why having trusted people doing the staffing is important.

Unfortunately, as I document in today’s article, “The Koch Appeasers Taking Over Trump’s Defense Department”, a network of Koch-funded people whose foreign policy is at odds with America First are filling up the Pentagon.

John A. Byers argued that “peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial prosperity” with China must be the watchwords for a second Trump administration. “The vastness and persistent growth of China’s trade” suggests a “future of mutually assured production rather than mutually assured destruction.”

Byers came out of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at the Bush School of Government which was funded by the Charles Koch Foundation. He has now been appointed the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Southeast Asia even though his Koch policy proposals run counter to Trump’s.

“A second Trump administration must also avoid a heightened trade war with China,” Byers had argued, “that will harm American prosperity”.

Byers explained that “vowing to avenge the ‘century of humiliation’ the CCP will not tolerate Western bullying about its internal affairs” and that if we don’t threaten China then “a more secure China is less likely to engage in excessive military buildups that heighten self-fulfilling spirals of fear and hostility.”

“American hegemony is over,” the future Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Southeast Asia concluded.

My reporting was picked up by Steve Bannon, Mark Levin and others.

How could someone like Byers be appointed as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Southeast Asia?

The answer may lie with Koch network figures who have been taking over the Pentagon in defiance of Trump.

“As of today, the incoming Trump Administration has hired over 1,000 people,” President Trump tweeted. “It would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch)” along with a long list of others.

But Dan Caldwell, listed as a lobbyist by Americans for Prosperity who worked for a number of Koch network groups, has been staffing up the Department of Defense. Caldwell had followed the Koch appeasement line by warning that “U.S. leaders should avoid overinflating the threat posed by China. Indeed, China has its own domestic and international constraints that may hinder its rise. Accordingly, policymakers should deal with the challenges posed by China without resurrecting the Cold War or raising the likelihood of direct conflict.”

President Trump’s foreign policy is once again being hijacked out from under him.